Perhaps I’m misunderstanding you, it seems like you’re implying that the JVM, as of today, isn’t the source of a lot of research or innovation. If that’s true,

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding you, it seems like you’re implying that the JVM, as of today, isn’t the source of a lot of research or innovation. If that’s true, you’re incorrect. There’s a _gigantic_ amount of money, time and people involved with it, arguably more than there ever has been, and it’s only getting bigger. While you’re correct that some of the knowledge that came out of building the implementation of the JVM has found its way into V8, there’s still cutting edge work being done into extremely sophisticated JIT complication (with graal, arguably the best in the world) and the recent work on GC is frankly stunning. With recent JVM versions running zgc, it’s typical to see sub-millisecond GC pauses, and that’s only going to improve as they add more collection outside of safepoints and adding generational logic to it. Net/net, while you’re correct that there’s a lot of innovation and resources behind v8 today and they’re doing fantastic work as well, don’t discount the JVM. Yes, Java itself isn’t a hugely interesting language, but the JVM is still arguably one of the most impressive bits of software ever produced and continues to be so.